But the events and the training by which they are to be raised to the height of matured intellect and power to which these
had attained in the acknowledged estimate of their contemporaries, lie in that undiscovered future, into which we strain
our thoughts vainly to penetrate. We have seen them in the fullness of their development, and we mourn them, not as
men with whom greatness and virtue and eloquence have perished from the land, but because we know what they were,
and what they have done, and were capable of doing: and we do not know who is to be the CALHOUN, the CLAY, or
the WEBSTER of the time that we feel to be coming, when we know that we shall need them. There is no want of faith
in Providence or trust in bumanity, in the mingling of these doubts for the future with the grateful memories of the past,
and the reverent homage we pay to the great endowments and great virtues with which the subjects of these funeral
tributes have elevated and adorned the American name.

Among the superstitions of the heathens prevalent in all times, but most known to us in the literature of the classics, is
that which supposes the spirits of the dead to be pleased and composed by the honors paid to their mortal remains.
Hence the ancients instituted expensive games and sacrifices for the dead. Among barbarous nations the sentiment runs
into cruel excesses, corresponding with the character of the race, in offering that which was most exciting to the pride
and passions of the living, as a tribute after death. The Iliad closes with a gorgeous account of the pomp with which Troy
exhibited her acute grief for the death of her great champion.